Is Simplified Meal Announcement an Alternative to Exact Carbohydrate Counting in Patients With Type-1 Diabetes Using...

Hybrid closed-loop (HCL) systems have become the standard of care for type-1 diabetes patients. However, they require exact carbohydrate counting (ECC), which can be complex. We conducted a meta-analysis to assess whether simplified meal announcement (SMA) is inferior to ECC by comparing the percentage of time spent in the time in range (TIR) 3.9 to 10 mmol/l.

PubMed, EMBASE, and Cochrane Central database were searched for randomized controlled trials (RCTs) that compared ECC to SMA and reported the outcomes of (1) percentage of 3.9 to 10 mmol/l glucose level time; (2) percentage of 3.9 to 7.8 mmol/l glucose level time; (3) total daily insulin units (TDI) per kg; and (4) coefficient of variation (CV) of glucose (%). Heterogeneity was examined with I² statistics. A random-effect generic inverse variance (GIV) method was applied to all analyses.

We included 4 RCTs (three of them crossover) with 137 patients, of whom 118 underwent SMA. Follow-up ranged from 2 weeks to 12 months. The pooled mean difference (MD) of percentage of time spent in TIR was -3.28 [-6.00, -0.56], indicating lower proportion with SMA. Two studies reported the percentage of TIR of 3.9 to 7.8 mmol/l, with a pooled effect size MD of -3.36 [-5.80, -0.92]). The pooled MD in TDI units per kg was 0.00 [-0.05, 0.05], and CV of glucose was 0.60 [0.02, 1.18]).

Simplified meal announcement may be considered as an alternative to ECC, but further research is needed to confirm its broader applicability.